But if you have rotated your terrain and then want to change a small part of it. Then what?

I followed one of your tutorials on making an island and I turned the island around until I got a good scene, but I wanted to remove a large mound that was in the way. When I went into the Terrain Editor, I couldn't work out which bit I had to alter as there were similar mounds around the edges.

But if you have rotated your terrain and then want to change a small part of it. Then what?

I followed one of your tutorials on making an island and I turned the island around until I got a good scene, but I wanted to remove a large mound that was in the way. When I went into the Terrain Editor, I couldn't work out which bit I had to alter as there were similar mounds around the edges.

OK, right, what you can do is this.

Use Edit > Copy Matrix on the terrain you want to edit.

Then reset the terrain orientation by clicking on one of the control points while holding down ctrl + alt.

This will then align the terrain in the scene so that you can place your camera over it (point your camera North as shown) - save your camera position first - before moving your camera.

You will now be in a position to look a the terrain as shown above - with known orientation.

Once you have made your changes.

Use Edit > Paste Matrix to restore your terrain back to it's original orientation.

Save the camera position and move the camera around, instead of the terrain. In this way, the terrain and the height map match. I do it as David outlined above (well, he crossposted meanwhile), with the camera looking to the upper screen edge if looked from above. You can then consider up=north, right=east, down=south and left=west - and this is also how the terrain height map appears in the DTE. Make sure to use the Perspective camera, not the Directors.

In the past I have been known to just put a small hard edged white dot on the height map and then go back to the viewport to see where it corresponds to.
Once you know that, just use 'undo' to get rid of the tall spike you just made.

Ah, isn't that nice. :red: Thanks all. This never bothered me too much before, Only has since I have this nice big widescreen monitor ( Ebay bargain) I have i been cursing. Just goes to show that no matter how long you have used Bryce there is always something new you can discover about it.

Hey here's an idea relating to the answers but has little to do with the question directly. Maybe a worthwhile new tutorial or perhaps part of a future product would be some artistic aides. What I mean by artistic aide is something that can either teach a user how to always start their scene so as to be able to, for example, efficiently use the terrain editor. It seems in this case part of the problem here is the person asking the question has already gotten fairly far along in his/her work to where he/she needs to take an extra step or two to be able to know what side is north in the terrain editor. If however there was something that say taught one how to make a default blank scene that already has a north pointing camera or something that can add a north pointing camera more quickly and easily then copying and pasting matrices then this wouldn't be a problem. Perhaps also it would be nice to have your scene start out in other ways that are already set up in anticipation of other needs. Like the way David sets up his scenes with the perspective camera. It could greatly facilitate things for people trying to follow David's tutorials if their default blank scenes opened already set up in ways to follow the tutorial so that the person following the tutorial didn't have to bother with setting that up before proceeding.

I don't know if what I'm thinking is possible but if so then perhaps it could be provided as a blank scene all set and ready to go and the user just opens it and saves it under edit/preferences such that it makes that page set up the default set up. If that can't be done then it could always be saved somewhere as an optimized blank scene and the user could just opens that scene as opposed to creating a new blank scene. That might be even better because then you could have several blank scenes all optimized for various scenarios and you just open the one that best matches what you want to do. Like a blank scene with all the proper settings already engaged for doing IBL or TA, or for doing an abstract vs a landscape, etc.

Hey here's an idea relating to the answers but has little to do with the question directly. Maybe a worthwhile new tutorial or perhaps part of a future product would be some artistic aides. What I mean by artistic aide is something that can either teach a user how to always start their scene so as to be able to, for example, efficiently use the terrain editor. It seems in this case part of the problem here is the person asking the question has already gotten fairly far along in his/her work to where he'she needs to take an extra step or two to be able to know what side is north in the terrain editor. If however there was something that say taught one how to make a default blank scene that already has a north pointing camera or something that can add a north pointing camera more quickly and easily then copying and pasting matrices then this wouldn't be a problem. Perhaps also it would be nice to have your scene start out in other ways that are already set up in anticipation of other needs. Like the way David sets up his scenes with the perspective camera. It could greatly facilitate things for people trying to follow David's tutorials if their default blank scenes opened already set up in ways to follow the tutorial so that the person following the tutorial didn't have to other with setting that up before proceeding.

I don't know if what I'm thinking is possible but if so then perhaps it could be provided as a blank scene all set and ready to go and the user just opens it and saves it under edit/preferences such that it makes that page set up the default set up. If that can't be done then it could always be saved somewhere as an optimized blank scene and the user could just opens that scene as opposed to creating a new blank scene. That might be even better because then you could have several blank scenes all optimized for various scenarios and you just open the one that best matches what you want to do. Like a blank scene with all the proper settings already engaged for doing IBL or TA, or for doing an abstract vs a landscape, etc.

That video of David's is one I followed to set up my own launch scene with the camera pointed at North. This is a good video to watch as it saves a lot of changing things to get started, you can just load and go.

Hey here's an idea relating to the answers but has little to do with the question directly. Maybe a worthwhile new tutorial or perhaps part of a future product would be some artistic aides. What I mean by artistic aide is something that can either teach a user how to always start their scene so as to be able to, for example, efficiently use the terrain editor. It seems in this case part of the problem here is the person asking the question has already gotten fairly far along in his/her work to where he'she needs to take an extra step or two to be able to know what side is north in the terrain editor. If however there was something that say taught one how to make a default blank scene that already has a north pointing camera or something that can add a north pointing camera more quickly and easily then copying and pasting matrices then this wouldn't be a problem. Perhaps also it would be nice to have your scene start out in other ways that are already set up in anticipation of other needs. Like the way David sets up his scenes with the perspective camera. It could greatly facilitate things for people trying to follow David's tutorials if their default blank scenes opened already set up in ways to follow the tutorial so that the person following the tutorial didn't have to other with setting that up before proceeding.

I don't know if what I'm thinking is possible but if so then perhaps it could be provided as a blank scene all set and ready to go and the user just opens it and saves it under edit/preferences such that it makes that page set up the default set up. If that can't be done then it could always be saved somewhere as an optimized blank scene and the user could just opens that scene as opposed to creating a new blank scene. That might be even better because then you could have several blank scenes all optimized for various scenarios and you just open the one that best matches what you want to do. Like a blank scene with all the proper settings already engaged for doing IBL or TA, or for doing an abstract vs a landscape, etc.

Hi All,
I've been using Bryce for a year only to create blank terrains and bring them into DAZ. I'm having an intermittent problem where imported jpgs (that have been edited in photoshop) become posterized in the terrian editor area. Smoothing, eroding and dampening help a little but end up changing the form too much. I'd like to get it right in photoshop where there's more freedom. This doesn't happen all the time so I'm not sure what to do.

The result of this is a terrain that's stair stepped like a pyramid- not good especially for water.

Thanks in advance for the help.
let me know if you'd like to see screen caps.

When terrains 'step' it's most likely because the bit depth of the original in Photoshop hasn't been set high enough.
Terrains need (at least) 16bit tif files. 8 bit (the default) will cause steps to show.

When terrains 'step' it's most likely because the bit depth of the original in Photoshop hasn't been set high enough.
Terrains need (at least) 16bit tif files. 8 bit (the default) will cause steps to show.

Yes, I was thinking the same thing, but Dave got there first. SO OK yes, Bryce is a little bit fussy about terrain import and export. It likes 16 bit greyscale tif or 16 bit greyscale png.

Edit. Oh just to be clear, greyscale is part of the format, it's not just that you are providing a greyscale - and this format is not supported by every paint package. For example, PSP8, which I use doesn't support this format. Which is why I process my terrains in Grome 3. Which does support this format, but is quite tricky to use.